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There is a difference between cutting to the bone and into the bone

Posted: November 25, 2012 - 12:12am

Savannah

When life is fair, the citizens of Beaufort County will heed Geena Davis’s plea in the 1986 movie, The Fly of “be afraid, be very afraid,” because I am afraid 2013 will become the year of tax increases. Some will probably be necessary, some questionable and some pork barreling.

None of this will be the fault of the looming reassessment, which essentially is a shift in the tax burden among different levels of taxpayers, not a revenue generator.

However, in the last few years, there have been very few increases in the operational budgets of the local governments, even at a time when the ever-greedy state Legislature continues to cut the funding allocations dictated by law to the local entities through special side legislation, preferring instead to waste it themselves.

Consequently, county and municipal governments have been forced to pare their budgets to the bone identifying essential and legally mandated services before allocating a dime.

While cutting services to the bone is not a bad thing, cutting into the bone is quite another happening often causing “unintended consequences,” that phrase should be the state motto, after the disastrous Act 388 passage.

No one should deny that we need increased police protection, the streets are becoming increasingly unsafe, Judges need to rule on the side of the citizens not the convicted criminals, and sentencing guidelines need to be tilted to the nature of the crimes to assure the safety of the citizens not the comfort of the convicted criminal. If that means more prosecutors, so be it.

Nevertheless, do we really need more schools and more roads? Although there are no new referendums scheduled for the immediate future and the most recent road sale tax of one percent has expired, politicians rarely allow the opportunity to borrow and spend more money to go quietly into the night.

The mortar on all of the new schools built with the last referendum borrowing, needed or not, has barely dried and we hear that the Bluffton complex is overcrowded. Well tough times call for tough measures. The first solution should not be the most expensive, throwing money at a problem often does not solve it. If taking advantage of unused capacity in other locations can solve the problem and that inconveniences some children, see it as a lesson learned. Life will be full of those inconveniences; see it as an opportunity to have more study time.

Moreover, finding ways to borrow gobs of money to build more roads that may or may not be needed — insurance company statistics say we won’t see a Category 3 hurricane for 79 years. Let’s build those roads in 69 years not now, or educate people to evacuate earlier.

Saving those taxes may mean an extra loaf of bread on some tables, err on the side of more bread not more taxes and preferably Wonder Bread.